Universals as Tyrants and as Mediators

Abstract

Universals play an important role in philosophical and scientific definitions of knowledge. For many writers to know means to possess an account composed of universals or, more recently, a theory. Some add that given a good theory one can forget about particulars. Thus Peter Medawar writes:

As science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass whereupon the facts need no longer be known explicitly. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. (The Art of the Soluble, London 1967, 114.)